Music and musings

Baby Plays Around (Elvis Costello)

I was doing some spring cleaning yesterday and found this lead sheet in a stack of old papers. I transcribed it from Elvis Costello’s 1995 album Deep Dead Blue, recorded live with Bill Frisell when Costello curated the Meltdown festival in London.

Elvis has recorded this ballad a few times (and I’m listening to Brad Mehldau’s trio version of the song while writing this), but the duo version with Frisell is my favorite.

A random connection to my last post on Kenny Wheeler’s “Heyoke”: both Brad and Keith Jarrett seem to quote “Happy Days Are Here Again” in their impressionistic solo cadenzas to the respective tunes.